How do you eat star fish?

Question

I saw some athletes eating star fish on the Olympics and got very curious. It left me wondering if you could just chew right through he shell and how one eats it, cooks it and what it tastes like. Hahahaha!

Answer 1

Do Starfish have Shells????

Answer 2

Yes they are edible, but for the life of me I would not know why.

Environmentalists and occupational safety advocates have come together to battle a new menace in Egypt — the irresponsible overfishing of sea cucumbers in the Red Sea.

The environmentalist concern is obvious, for Egypt "is one of several countries plagued by sea cucumber overfishing in recent years along with Ecuador's Galapagos Islands, India and the Philippines which has enacted an absolute ban on their capture." And if such overfishing is not stopped, the sea cucumber faces extinction, a terrible event which "would threaten the life of the Red Sea by annihilating a basic building block of its ecosystem."



However, this tragedy also has a human face, for impoverished Egyptian divers face the very real risk of injury and death in their search for sea cucumbers. The lure is that of the almighty dollar, for sea cucumbers are in great demand in Asia's markets.

Per the Agence France Presse:

    In China, the processed carcasses called hai-som are believed to have curative powers. The Japanese eat them raw, nibble on their pickled intestines over drinks and eat their dried gonads as a special treat. Malaysians bottle sea cucumbers in a pure form to cure internal ailments such as ulcers, and rub a mixture of the extract on toothaches and cuts.

Given this excessive demand for sea cucumbers, and given the numbers of "unemployed Egyptians desperate for money," a recipe for disaster can't help but emerge. Indeed, "inexperienced divers, preyed upon by captains of fishing boats, have been given money and shoddy equipment, and sent to dive as deep as 40-50 meters (130-160 feet) three or four times a day in dangerous succession. Many are unemployed college graduates who have never learned they need to rest on the surface between dives to dissolve nitrogen that accumulates underwater in the bloodstream." The overall result is a grim spike in cases of life-threatening diving ailments like decompression sickness.

What is to be done? Experts note that although the Egyptian government "imposed a ban earlier this year on fishing the creature, sea cucumber can still be exported legally, which makes it difficult to stop the poaching." Not surprisingly, these advocates call for this loophole to be closed: "Stop sea cucumber exporting from Egypt. Why would people fish if they cannot sell what they're fishing?"